INT: We haven’t heard about your husband, how did you meet him?
ED: Well, that’s a long story, isn’t it?
[Laughter].
ED: Well, while I was in Israel on my first visit, I was staying with my mum and dad, obviously, but my brother got married and his wife was five months’ pregnant and they didn’t have a house yet, or a flat or anywhere to go. So they stayed, while waiting to go somewhere. So I stayed there and Lulu, that’s my sister-in-law, she said, “Well, go and take your shower and put your, whatever you have nice something, we are going to a wedding.” We are going to a wedding, nobody knows me here and I don’t go where I’m not invited. “No, no, they know you are here because this is one of my cousins and I’m going and you’re coming with us. They said to bring her with you.” So, I looked at mum, she said, “Well, why don’t you go, there’s nothing else to do?”
So I went and there was a cousin of David there, she was invited there, and she sat and she was talking with my sister-in-law, on that kind of table, and she said, “Oh, you must have, David is here, you must have met David, he’s from London, here on holiday.” “Who’s David, who met David?” “He’s from Baghdad.” Well, he didn’t live next door and even then, so Jewish people in Baghdad, I didn’t know, I didn’t know him from… And she said, “David”, right across, you know they still do that in Israel, and David came and I was introduced to David.
And, you know, I came back to London and he hadn’t finished his studies yet. I was working and we just, kind of, really met very casually, not like today, you know? And I was living in London; he was in London, finishing. I was staying in, what do they call them now? In a guest house, kind of thing. He was studying and working in the evening, to keep himself. And then he finished his studies and there were four other guys with him, and to celebrate their fortunes and misfortunes, they took me to the opera that night, and they were teasing David, he’s got Honours and one of them did not quite pass. And Honours is, those days you don’t work for Honours, if you sit an exam and you do very well, over the mark of passing, you get an Honours degree. So they were teasing him for that. So anyway, they all went and he said, “Well I’ll take you home”. It wasn’t very far, and we sat and talked, and you know, we just talked and we eventually got together.
INT: And, once you were married, did you speak in Arabic at home or did you…?
ED: Yes, in Arabic at home and, every now and again, a word in French and a word in English, you know. If it happened to be because, you know, my mum and dad didn’t learn English. That’s how we arrived in Scotland.